Ubuntu and Thunderbird: What the Future Might Hold

For years, Ubuntu’s default email client was Evolution. Then, last year, Canonical switched to Mozilla Thunderbird. But now recent doubts over the future of Thunderbird — most of them pretty speculative — have spawned worries that Thunderbird might, in its turn, disappear from Ubuntu. Will it? And more importantly, would it really matter to many people? Here are some thoughts.

First, a little background. Last week, a leaked emailraised concerns over the future of the Mozilla project’s commitment to Thunderbird, the offline email client that complements Mozilla’s more massively popular Web browser, Firefox. At the moment, it’s far from clear that Mozilla intends to discontinue active Thunderbird development, but that hasn’t stopped speculation that Canonical might opt to find a new email program for Ubuntu.

Thunderbird and Ubuntu: What’s Really at Stake

I’m not a Thunderbird fan. For the last several years I’ve mostly used browser-based webmail, and before that I preferred Evolution (despite some inadequacies).

If I did depend on Thunderbird, though, I wouldn’t be too worried by the recent news and hype. For one, since Thunderbird is part of the application stack in Ubuntu 12.04, which will remain officially supported by Canonical for five years, it clearly won’t be disappearing entirely from the Ubuntu world for a long time to come, even if future Ubuntu releases switch to a different client. Ubuntu “Community Manager” Jono Bacon has gone to lengths to assure users of the same.

But the requirements of the Ubuntu support cycle aside, it has always seemed to me that, despite Canonical’s official nod to usability concerns when adopting Thunderbird, the biggest factor in the decision was probably a desire to get away from dependency on the GNOME project. It was a move consistent with the broader switch toward the Unity interface, which has made GNOME a fleeting memory for many Ubuntu users. (Except all of those, of course, who hate Unity and manually replace it with a different desktop environment.)

My inclination, therefore, is to believe that as long as it can, Canonical will stick with Thunderbird simply because there is no other good, GNOME-independent option. Sure, there are a litany of other email clients out there, but Thunderbird and Evolution are the only feature-rich choices available to Linux users.

Goodbye, Thunderbird; Hello, Webmail?

Of course, there is another possibility for Canonical if it is concerned over the implications of the Mozilla-Thunderbird debacle: It could simply cease shipping an offline email client with Ubuntu altogether. Such a move would reduce Ubuntu’s upstream dependencies, save space in the installation image and make it that much easier for Canonical to push Ubuntu as the operating system of the cloud-based future, not the intermittently connected past.

Without a doubt, a standalone email program is essential for some users. But for most people — if surveys like this one are any evidence — webmail is sufficient. It would not be unreasonable for Canonical to suggest that those who need a program like Thunderbird or Evolution should install it themselves, while everyone else will be covered by the Web browser provided out-of-the-box. And then Mozilla’s plans for Thunderbird wouldn’t have to matter so much to Ubuntu users at all.

15 comments

When webmail can support things like gnupg for privacy (which has to support local/client side processing otherwise it is compromisable), and also makes it easy to select and/or delete a large number of emails, then I would consider it viable. I do perform essential communication with email, and literally the life and safety of others could be put in jeopardy with most (externally hosted) webmail services available today.

Luke Skywalker needs to continue in his efforts to further transition his offering to a microsoft wannabe. What better way than to embrace windows-8-mail? Then, perhaps, Ballmergates will consider “monetizing” Luke’s brainchild, along with all the other sterling purchases they’ve had to write down.

Re “Community Manager” Jono Bacon: what “community” does he manage, and what does he do whenever he does what it is he does? The only time he’s been heard from is when he’s played gaffe-generating apologist for ubuntu. The smartest marketing move Luke has made, to this point, is not letting Bacon out in public any more.

When Sarah Palin was asked what a “community organizer” did (the previous job of a political opponent), she responded that a “community organizer” was somewhat like being the mayor of a small town–only the small-town mayor had actual responsibilities.

The development team keeps the latest stable builds available in a timely manner.

I need not worry that a different between the official build and the Ubuntu build is to blame when I discover something wrong.

And what goes to Thunderbird… I dumped it after hanging onto the 2.0.0.24 build for a LONG time. That was the last usable version of Thunderbird. Now I happily use SeaMonkey for mail, has the added benefit of providing the useful Composer component which I use occasionally to sanitize someone’s nasty hand coded HTML. And a SM extension named Launchy provides URL handling support in SM emails to launch Firefox instead of opening a SM Browser window… since I maintain my best browser profile in Firefox, and chose not to merge it back into SM when I migrated from TB –gt; SM.

Have you ever worked for a large corporation? MS Exchange is the centerpiece (for lots of good reasons), and unless your desktop integrates well with it, you cannot do work.

And it’s not enough to just have the “office remix” of Ubuntu support it, because many people need to access work email from home. So, you need good VPN support, and a host of other technologies. Ubuntu has worked very hard to make sure it integrates well with office tech, which is why these decisions have been so crucial.

So, it doesn’t affect you much, I get it. But you keep using phrases like “most Ubuntu users” where you really should say “some Ubuntu home users.” The fact that you don’t acknowledge your bias clearly really hurts your reporting of these issues and their evaluation! Good MS Exchange integration is still crucial for Ubuntu’s success, and you should be clamoring for the project to get it right, not suggest going “web mail.” That’s simply a non-starter for corporations.

I use Ubuntu and I agree that webmail, especially Gmail, has a stronger edge in usability than Thunderbird. I have preferred webmail to offline clients for a long time now, and even when it disappears, it’s more the merrier for webmail users.

The funny reality is that Thunderbird keeps its integrity as an open source client. Whatever lies in webmail belongs to the company providing it, but with an offline mail client, the user keeps his own content.

Most users still prefer convenience over strictly adhering to the open source spirit, anyway.

I’ve preferred using a desktop client for a long time for a host of reasons: privacy, backups, and the convenience of managing multiple email accounts from the same place. I’ve been using Thunderbird pretty much ever since I first had email and I love it to pieces.

The question of default app *does* have significance though, for things like integration with system calendars, which some people care about.

For once I’d like to see Ubuntu actually solidly commit to something and stick with it for more than a year (I’m looking at you Banshee/Rhythmbox flip-flop). Ubuntu needs to start treating its default applications as a core part of Ubuntu so that it can produce an integrated environment for users AND *importantly* keep those apps as the defaults with integration for the future (Think F-Spot/Shotwell).

It really doesn’t matter to me either way, in 12.04 one of the very first things i did before going after anything was uninstall Mozilla and reinstalled Evolution. Then removed Mozilla from the launcher menu and put Evolution back. But honestly i have drifted away from “any ubuntu” based distributions and went to a slackware based os. I already own a nice Android Smart Phone. I do not want one on my desktop.

Canonical Senior Exec Mark Shuttleworth dismissed criticisms of his choice to switch to the Windows code base for the forthcoming Ubuntu release. “Microsoft are really great”, he said, “it’s hard to overstate how good they really are and how much they’ve contributed to computers.” When asked what of Ubuntu’s origins in Linux, Mr Shuttleworth said “Linwho?”

When it will be possible to manage several imap accounts on different providers, I’ll /start/ considering webmail.
I tried doing that in gmail and it’s a complete MESS and anyway, some things cannot be done.

Webmail also assumes an almost continual and relatively fast internet connection. With Thunderbird a lot of work can be done off line.

Engimail and GPG are almost seamless in Thunderbird and amazingly user friendly. Write an email, click the encrypt button and send. Sure beats letting emails with sensitive information fly across the internet like a postcard going through the postal service.

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